For only one Taylor Swift live performance, Key Funding Group allegedly used 49 totally different accounts to buy 273 tickets.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Federal Commerce Fee filed a lawsuit Monday towards a ticket dealer, alleging the corporate used unlawful techniques to exceed buying limits for common occasions after which resold tickets at considerably increased costs.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court docket in Maryland, the FTC mentioned Maryland-based ticket dealer Key Funding Group has used hundreds of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts and different strategies to purchase tickets for occasions, together with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
In keeping with the FTC, Key Funding Group – which does enterprise below model names like Epic Seats and Completely Tix – bought not less than 379,776 tickets from Ticketmaster between Nov. 1, 2022, and Dec. 30, 2023. The corporate spent practically $57 million to purchase the tickets and resold them on secondary marketplaces for about $64 million.
For only one Taylor Swift live performance, Key Funding Group allegedly used 49 totally different accounts to buy 273 tickets, dramatically exceeding the Eras Tour’s 2023 six-ticket buy restrict per occasion, the FTC mentioned. Followers have been so annoyed by the problem getting tickets for Swift’s tour that the U.S. Senate wound up grilling Ticketmaster in a 2023 listening to.
In an announcement launched Monday, Key Funding Group mentioned it can vigorously defend itself towards the FTC’s lawsuit.
“The case threatens to dismantle the secondary ticket marketplace for stay occasions, additional consolidating energy within the fingers of the trade’s largest monopoly,” the corporate mentioned.
Key Funding Group mentioned the FTC is misapplying the Higher On-line Ticket Gross sales Act, a 2016 regulation which it mentioned was meant to focus on malicious software program, not professional resale companies. Key Funding Group sued the FTC in July to attempt to forestall the company from utilizing the regulation towards it, saying it makes use of human workers — not bots — to purchase tickets.
However the FTC mentioned that regulation additionally prohibits anybody from circumventing safety measures and different controls meant to implement posted ticket limits.
In March, with Child Rock by his facet within the Oval Workplace, President Donald Trump signed an government order directing U.S. officers to make sure ticket resellers are complying with Inner Income Service guidelines. The order additionally directed the FTC to make sure “worth transparency in any respect phases of the ticket-purchase course of” and to “take enforcement motion to forestall unfair, misleading, and anti-competitive conduct within the secondary ticketing market.”
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